


The Pianist and the Artist

by Purseplayer



Series: Klaine Advent 2013 [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purseplayer/pseuds/Purseplayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine is a lonely pianist grieving the loss of his daughter.  Kurt is a homeless artist who brings color back into Blaine's life.  Fill for Klaine Advent 2013 Prompt 1: Artist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pianist and the Artist

Blaine kept playing after she died.  All he did was play.  And drink.  And play.

He couldn’t hear the music anymore.

*******

The man appeared on a cool, crisp morning in late October.  Blaine spotted him through the window and scowled.  What was a common city bum doing on a street like this?  This was an expensive, high-class neighborhood—especially for New York City—and his kind usually knew to stay away.

Only clearly, this man didn’t.

Blaine felt the ire rising in his chest as he took another long swig, finishing off the bottle and tossing it gently onto the heap with the others.  He would tell him.  He would make sure this man never dared to wonder onto his street again.  If he failed to listen, Blaine would simply call the cops.

Blaine tore through his front door, barely having the presence of mind to grab his jacket on the way out, and all but ran down the street, his neighbors’ houses still closed up and quiet at the early hour. 

He made it a few feet from the man and ground to a sudden, violent stop.  He stared.

The square of sidewalk the man was hunched over was adorned in vibrant colors—lush greens and bright oranges and rosy pinks.  The concrete was becoming the Garden of Eden.

Blaine felt his breath leave him in a rush, his exhalation loud and notable, but the man still gave no indication that he was aware of Blaine’s presence.  Slowly, Blaine pivoted around and made his way back home.

*******

The next morning the man was there again.  By nine am he had vanished, the sidewalk square now complete and drawing much attention, if the crowd Blaine could see gathered around the area was any indication.

Something clenched at Blaine’s heart.  He couldn’t bring himself to look out his window the next day, or the day after that.

On the first of November there were errands to be run, and Blaine had a meeting with his agent that couldn’t be missed about his schedule for the upcoming holiday season.  He slipped out of the house a little after six, hoping as always to bypass his nosy, overly-sympathetic neighbors.

And there he was again, inscribing life onto a third block of cold grey tedium.  Blaine didn’t want to, but he found his feet carrying him over to the man anyway, some unknown force imploring him to linger there for far too long.

The artist moved with a sort of ethereal grace for a homeless man, even given the bulk of his drab black coat.  Blaine found himself staring as much at him as he was at his creation.  And then, just when he was gathering himself to turn away and leave, the unthinkable happened.  The man looked up, directly into Blaine’s eyes.  Blaine’s breath caught in his throat.

He was beautiful.

The dirt and unkemptness were remarkable, yes, but far less so than the man himself.  His face was sculpted into fine, delicate features that flirted the line between masculine and feminine.  His eyes were a clear, fathomless blue that stood out starkly against the pallor of his skin and seemed to suit perfectly both the cold air surrounding them and the barrenness of Blaine’s own heart.

They pierced him, held him.  They _demanded_ something from him.

“I—“Blaine started to say.  Then a door opened at one of the nearby houses, startling them both.  The man turned back to his work, the set of his shoulders tense.  Blaine startled, looking around himself frantically.  “I have to go,” he said instead, backing away.

The man didn’t acknowledge him.  Blaine didn’t know why his indifference stung so badly.

*******

It became habit, after that.  Habit was his way of life these days, but never one so strange and inexplicable as this.  Never like this.

Kurt was there, like clockwork, at five-thirty each morning, mastering the street with his chalk.  And Blaine would be there too, standing and observing and talking, his morning beer in hand, while Kurt did his work in silence, rarely acknowledging his presence.  At seven o-clock the neighborhood began to stir, and Blaine would be gone.  By nine-thirty, Kurt was always gone too.

Blaine didn’t know what he talked about, didn’t plan it or think it through.  It was everything and nothing.  His music, his childhood, his bitch of an agent.  That man he’d fucked in the restroom of a bar last Wednesday night.  It didn’t matter.  Kurt never said anything back.

Kurt.  His name.  It’s what kept Blaine coming back.  He’d noticed it a few mornings in, scrawled in the corner of Kurt’s latest masterpiece, and he knew it had been placed there just for him.

November was fading, the weather growing colder, and one night it snowed and Kurt didn’t show up.

Blaine was terrified of the day he would never show up again.

*******

It was the third of December, and Kurt was sick.  His art was impeccable as ever, but he was slower now, stalling ever minute to play victim to a deep, wracking cough.

“Hey,” Blaine said, daring to move in closer.  “Hey, drink this.”  He shoved the half-empty bottle of beer in front of Kurt’s nose.  “It might help.”

It wasn’t the first time he had offered.  As before, Kurt waved him away.

“You’re sick, Kurt,” Blaine said with more compassion.  “Come back to my place.  I have medicine, heat.  Food, if you want it.”

Kurt shook his head.  Blaine sighed and kneeled down before him, forcing the other man to look him in the eye.  “Please,” he pleaded.

When Kurt didn’t answer, Blaine reluctantly stood up and began to walk away.

To his immense surprise, Kurt followed.

*******

Back at his home, Blaine left a bewildered Kurt to explore the living room while he heated up some soup in the kitchen and dug a bottle of cough syrup out of the medicine cupboard.  He called for Kurt when it was ready but received no response.  Kurt was no longer in the living room.  He wasn’t in the bathroom either.

Blaine finally found him in the music room, pressing so lightly on the keys of Blaine’s piano that it didn’t make a sound.  Blaine smiled at him.

“Do you play?” he asked, knowing he wouldn’t get an answer.

He didn’t.

“I’ve been playing since I was three.  I couldn’t even read then, but I learned.”

Kurt already knew this, of course.  Blaine was sure he’d mentioned it at least a dozen times in his daily ramblings.

“Your food is ready,” he told Kurt, praying he’d get more of a response.  “It’s in the kitchen.”

To his relief, Kurt turned to him easily at the words, following him back to the kitchen table where he sat and ate without prompting.  Blaine took the chair across from him and watched, pleased to note that Kurt at least wasn’t tackling the food as a starving man would.  He wasn’t starving.

It was probably rude to stare at him while he ate, but Blaine thought that Kurt ought to be used to it by now.  When the bowl of soup was nearly gone, he rose.  “I’ll just be a minute,” he told Kurt.

No reaction.  Of course.

A few minutes later, he returned with a towel and stack of spare clothes to find Kurt staring out the tiny window, his empty bowl sitting in the sink.

“Kurt,” Blaine said, grateful when the other man’s head turned to consider him.  He offered up the towel and the clothing.  “I, umm, thought you might like a shower.”

Kurt’s eyebrow quirked, and for a minute Blaine thought he might refuse.  But then he nodded slightly, taking the bundle from Blaine’s arms.

“It’s down the hall, first door on your right.”

Blaine stayed in the kitchen until he heard the door closing and then made his way to the bathroom himself, pressing his ear up against the cool white wood of the door and listening to the beat of the water against the shower floor.

He wished he could find a way to keep Kurt here forever.

*******

When Kurt got out of the shower he looked like an entirely different person.  Stripped of his heavy coat, Blaine could see that Kurt was in fact lean and lithe.  He looked younger like this too, with his wet hair clinging to his forehead, the sleeves of Blaine’s over-sized sweatshirt a little too long and length of the borrowed lounge pants an inch or so too short.

“I’ll have to wash your clothes,” Blaine said.  “Why don’t you make yourself at home while I do?  You’re welcome to the TV in the living room.  There’s a computer in there too.  And… the piano?”  Blaine looked carefully for a reaction to his last suggestion, but received none.  Kurt walked past him, probably to the living room after all, and Blaine went into the bathroom to gather up his clothes to launder.

When he was finished he found Kurt fast asleep on the couch with a rerun of Project Runway playing on the TV.  He pulled down the afghan and tucked him in, the gesture achingly familiar.  But this was different, Blaine reminded himself.  Kurt was alive, was _full_ of life.

He went to the music room on auto-pilot, sitting down at the piano and letting the music pour out of him.  Something different this time.  Something new.

Minutes might have passed or hours.  He paused only once to switch the wash, checking briefly on Kurt and finding him exactly as he was.  When he stopped again Kurt was gone, the dryer empty and the blanket folded as well as the clothes he’d borrowed, set in a neat little pile on the coffee table. 

In the kitchen a bagel was missing, and on the counter was a simple note.

_You play beautifully_.

Blaine smiled to himself, whistling, and returned to his piano.  This time when his hands fell over the keys, the music _was_ beautiful.  It echoed like a promise in the darkest corners of Blaine’s heart.

*******

Kurt was back on the street the next morning, still coughing, and Blaine was grateful he’d thought to bring some medicine with him.  He’d forgotten his beer, though.  This time when Blaine appeared Kurt turned to him immediately with a smile, taking the medication and then settling back into his work.

“You can come back with me anytime, you know,” Blaine told him, just before making his exit at seven o’clock.  “Or come at night, Kurt.  If you… if you need a place to stay.”

Kurt didn’t respond, didn’t even look at him, and Blaine feared he’d gone too far.  But that night, there was a knock on his door.

“Kurt,” Blaine said, his heart lifting.

And so it began.

*******

A few days later, Blaine presented Kurt was a wrapped gift.  “It’s a little early,” he said.  “But I wanted you to be able to create while you were here, too.”

When Kurt tore the paper off to reveal several canvases and a set of oil paints, his smile lit the room.  Blaine was unprepared when Kurt flung himself into his arms, but it was a welcome surprise.

*********

December seventeenth was always a terrible day and on it, Blaine liked to play terrible music while staring at her picture, liked to torture himself with all he had lost.  He had the presence of mind to leave the door unlocked for Kurt (where did the man go during the day, between decorating their sidewalks and falling asleep on Blaine’s couch?) before he shut himself up in his music room to pass the long, desolate hours.

And that was how Kurt found him.  Blaine couldn’t even bring himself to care, not the moment he heard Kurt’s startled gasp at the doorway, nor the moment his gentle hands carefully turned Blaine’s face, trying and failing to meet his eyes, and especially not the moment those same hands settled over Blaine’s shoulders then stroked down the length of his arms, closing over Blaine’s hands where they still rested on the keys and pulling him up, away…

They were in Blaine’s bedroom, and Kurt all but slammed him against the wall, advancing on him with tear-filled eyes and kissing him and kissing him and kissing him until Blaine felt like he was drowning.  They were on the bed and God, Blaine wanted so badly to drown.  He let Kurt strip away his many layers and touch him and press into him and into him and into him, spread himself out like an offering for Kurt to take.  For Kurt to take care of.

Kurt kissed his eyes when it was over and curled up against him, his skin perfect and soft and he was youth, personified.  He was life.  He was art, and music, and those things lived forever, didn’t they?

He let himself believe it as he drifted off to sleep.

*******

On Christmas morning the sidewalk up and down Blaine’s street was completely covered in artwork that was entirely unrelated to the holiday season, but nobody cared about that, least of all Blaine.  It even made the paper.

Kurt’s vivid blue eyes were the first thing Blaine saw when he opened his own.  The clock read six-thirty, and they were still warm and together in bed.  There was a box on the nightstand wrapped with Blaine’s own wrapping paper, but it hadn’t been his doing.

“You got me something?” he asked.  He wasn’t aware of Kurt having any money of his own.  That was something they could fix, maybe, in the new year.

Kurt nodded and smiled, picking up the package and shoving it into his hands with childlike eagerness.  Blaine opened it carefully, wanting to savor the surprise.  He hadn’t received any Christmas gifts last year, only cards filled with the same empty, clinical sympathy.

It was one of the canvases, covered over with Kurt’s usual variety of lush flowers and rich green leaves, here entwined with musical notes.  In the very center a delicate, pretty face peeked out amid the greenery.

“Your daughter,” Kurt said, his voice rough and high and beautiful.

Like music.


End file.
